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Friday, January 15, 2016

An Unfortunate Case of Bigotry at a Global Warming Conference

When I first heard about this, I didn't believe it and I didn't want to believe it. So, I had to find the video for myself. This is Dr. Gavin Schmidt, NASA's chief climate scientist, revealing himself to be a bigot at a climate conference on January 6 (jump to the 1:00 mark). I considered quite a while before posting it before deciding in the affirmative. How did I come to that decision? Dr. Schmidt is paid by our tax dollars. But, the more important point is that pro-catastrophic global warming advocates constantly tell us "the science is settled" and "trust us." So, if they believe they deserve our trust, their character comes into play when deciding whether that trust is earned.

What did he say? Watch the video for yourself or see below:

Now, you know there’s some communities I can’t talk to because, you know, I’m a liberal, Jewish atheist from New York City, right? So if I go to Texas and try and tell people about climate change, I’m totally the wrong messenger, right? Because we don’t have any shared values quite frankly. But, some people do, right? So, Katherine Hayhoe, right? So, you know she married an evangelical pastor, and I don’t know if you saw ‘Years of Living Dangerously’? She’s featured on one segment there talking to townsfolk in Plano, Texas, and she’s one of them. She’s from Canada, so she’s not quite one of them, but she’s almost one of them. So, she can talk with them in ways that don’t threaten their kind of who they see themselves as. A lot of times we think, ‘oh, more science, more science’, and really we want to allow less science and more cultural understanding, and that might take us a lot further.”

"'Their' kind.""One of 'them'." We don't have "shared values." "Townsfolk." "We really want to allow less science..." [emphasis mine] I thought we had shared values because we are Americans. Dr. Schmidt states he believes otherwise.

I went through his Twitter posts to see if he clarified or retracted his remarks but I found nothing

P.S. I presume the quote on the screen during the video about being able to forecast the future refers to climate science. If so, I disagree with the quote in the strongest possible way. Climate science, so far, has shown zero ability to accurately forecast the future state of the climate.